Trivia / The Legend of Drizzt

• Executive Meddling:
  • R.A. Salvatore originally wrote the Icewind Dale Trilogy to be a standalone trilogy before being asked to do the Dark Elf Trilogy as a prequel. From there, he wrote the Legacy of the Drow series with the intention of ending the series with Passage to Dawn. He was then informed that they would continue the Drizzt series with or without him and he chose to do with. The books have continued in production ever since.
  • The entirety of the Hunter's Blades Trilogy, Transitions, and The Neverwinter Trilogy was the result of the massive amount of setting changes triggered by Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. This included a hundred year time skip and much of the world being reduced to a After the End chaotic hellhole. The irony being that almost as soon as Salvatore finished his series about the transition, the Sundering happened and Fifth Edition changed most of the setting back to its prior state.
  • The Kingdom of Many Arrows was originally just a monster kingdom created for the Icewind Dale region to give the PCs some extra creatures to kill as well as take advantage of the Lord of the Rings movies returning orcs to prominence. RA Salvatore turned it into a massive story of racial tolerance and Cycle of Hatred violence. The Kingdom was then destroyed by Wizards of the Coast decree to make orcs Always Chaotic Evil again.
• What Could Have Been: Had it progressed any further, the one-shot Hasbro comic Unit: E would've potentially featured Drizz't, who makes a brief cameo as Synergy opens a view of the multiverse◊ for Acroyear and Biotron.
• Word of God:
  • Ed Greenwood has mentioned Artemis and Drizzt are two of the Realm's top ten swordsmen despite their relatively modest (By Realm's standards) character levels. (Greenwood has noted it's largely impossible to do a proper ranked top 10, because the rarefied skill they display is so fine that even a tiny change in one character's ability could send them plummeting off the list or rocketing to the top.) It should be noted, however, that there's no indication R.A. Salvatore had anything to do with Drizzt's or Entreri's stats in the sourcebooks. If anything, Salvatore's depictions of Drizzt and Entreri in the novels dovetails nicely with Greenwood's declaration.
  • RA Salvatore has said that, at least in his conception of the Realms, there is no such thing as Always Chaotic Evil and every race has an equal chance of becoming good if given the right opportunities.